Corporation Nation: How Corporations are Taking Over Our Lives -- and What We Can Do About It

Front Cover
St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2014 M09 9 - 384 pages

Foreword by Ralph Nader. In Corporation Nation Derber addresses the unchecked power of today's corporations to shape the way we work, earn, buy, sell, and think—the very way we live. Huge, far-reaching mergers are now commonplace, downsizing is rampant, and our lines of communication, news and entertainment media, jobs, and savings are increasingly controlled by a handful of global—and unaccountable—conglomerates. We are, in effect, losing our financial and emotional security, depending more than ever on the whim of these corporations. But it doesn't have to be this way, as this book makes clear. Just as the original Populist movement of the nineteenth century helped dethrone the robber barons, Derber contends that a new, positive populism can help the U.S. workforce regain its self-control.

Drawing on core sociological concepts and demonstrating the power of the sociological imagination, he calls for revisions in our corporate system, changes designed to keep corporations healthy while also making them answerable to the people. From rewriting corporate charters to altering consumer habits, Derber offers new aims for businesses and empowering strategies by which we all can make a difference.

 

Contents

Acknowledgments
The New Problem with NoName
The End of the Century
The Curse of the RobberBarons THREE The Mouse Mickey MouseandBabyBells
The Making of the Corporate Mystique
The Dependent Corporation
Enough
Index

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2014)

Charles Derber, professor of sociology at Boston College and noted social critic, is the author of The Wilding of America.

Bibliographic information